Life Between Death and Rebirth

Schmidt Number: S-2654

On-line since: 27th October, 2004

V

Life Between Death and Rebirth

Munich, November 26, 1912

It has
often been explained that it is not as easy to investigate and
describe the realm of the occult as is commonly thought. If one
wishes to proceed conscientiously in this domain, one will feel it
necessary to make repeatedly fresh investigations into important
chapters of spiritual research. In recent months it has been my task,
among many other things, to make new investigations into a subject of
which we have often spoken here. New aspects emerge as a result of
such investigations.

Today we shall deal again with the life between death and rebirth,
although it can only be done in outline. This does not mean that what
has previously been said has to be changed in any way. Precisely in
connection with this chapter this is not the case, but in the study
of super-sensible facts we should always consider them from as many
points of view as possible. So today we will consider from a
universal standpoint much of what has been presented in my books
Theosophy
or
Occult Science
more from the aspect of
immediate human experience. The facts are the same, but we should not
imagine that we are fully conversant with them when they have been
described from one point of view only. Occult facts are such that we
must move around them, so to speak, and examine them from every point
of view. In regard to spiritual science the mistake is all too common
that judgments are passed by people who may have heard a few
statements about a subject without having had the patience to allow
what can be said from other aspects to work upon them. Yet the truths
of spiritual research can be understood by sound common sense, as was
pointed out in yesterday's public lecture.

Today we shall not pay so much attention to the stage after death
where the life in kamaloca begins, but rather consider the point at
the end of kamaloca when life in the spiritual proper begins. This
period lasts until the soul descends into a new incarnation and
re-enters earthly life.

Something can be communicated about these matters because, as you
know, clairvoyant vision brings one into the same realm in which a
human being dwells between death and rebirth. In initiation one
experiences, although in a different way, what takes place between
death and rebirth. This accounts for the fact that one can
communicate something about this realm.

To being with, I wish to mention two fundamental points of
clairvoyant perception that also will help in our understanding of
life after death. Attention has often been drawn to the great
difference between life in the super-sensible world and life in the
physical, material world. For instance, the process of knowledge is
totally different in the super-sensible world from what it is on
earth. In the physical world objects present themselves to our senses
by making impressions of color and light upon our eyes, audible
impressions upon our ears and other impressions upon other sense
organs. To perceive objects we must move about in the world. To
perceive an object at a distance, we must go towards it. Briefly, in
the sense world we must move about to perceive things. The opposite
holds true for super-sensible perceptions. The quieter the soul, the
more everything in the way of inner movement is excluded, the less we
strive to draw a thing towards us, the longer we are capable of
waiting, the more surely will the perception come and the truer will
be the experience we gain from it. In the super-sensible world we must
allow things to approach us. That is an essential point. We must
develop inner silence. Then things will come to us.

The second point I wish to make is this. The way in which the
super-sensible world confronts us depends on what we bring with us
from the ordinary sense world. This is important. It may give rise to
considerable soul difficulties in the super-sensible world. For
instance, it may be exceedingly painful to realize in the
super-sensible world that we loved a person less than we ought to have
done, less then he deserved to be loved by us. This fact stands
before the spiritual gaze of one who has entered the super-sensible
world with far greater intensity than could ever be the case in the
physical world. In addition, something else may cause great pain to
one with clairvoyant consciousness. None of the forces that we are
able to draw from the super-sensible world can in any way change or
improve a relationship of soul in the physical that we recognize as
not having been right. It cannot be made good by forces drawn from
the spiritual world. This experience is infinitely more painful than
anything we may experience in the physical world. It gives rise to a
feeling of powerlessness towards the necessity of karma that can be
lived out only in the physical world. These two factors confront the
pupil of occult science after only a little progress. They appear
immediately in the life between death and rebirth. Suppose that
shortly after death we meet a person who died before us. We encounter
him, and we feel the total relationships that we had with him here on
earth. We are together with the one who died before, at the same time
or after us, and we feel that that is how we stood with him in life.
That was our relationship to him. But whereas in the physical world
when we realize that we have done an injustice to someone in feeling
or in deed, we are able to make the necessary adjustment, we are not
able to do so, directly, in the life after death. Clear insight into
the nature of the relationship is there, but in spite of the full
awareness that it ought to be different, we are incapable of changing
anything. To begin with, things must remain as they are. The
depression caused by many a reproach is due to the fact that one is
clearly aware of the way in which a relationship was not right but it
must be left as it is. Yet one feels all the time that it ought to be
different. This mood of soul should be transposed to the whole of
life after death. After death we realize all the more strongly what
we did wrongly during our life on earth but we are incapable of
changing anything. Things must take their course, regardless. We look
back on what we have done and we must experience wholly the
consequences of our actions, knowing full well that nothing can be
altered.

It is not only with relationships to other human beings, but with the
whole of our soul configuration after death, which depends on a
number of factors. To begin with, let me portray life after death in
the form of Imaginations. If we take the words “Visions”
or “Imaginations” in the sense in which I explained them
yesterday, no misunderstanding will arise. Man perceives the physical
world through his sense organs. After death he lives in a world of
visions, but these visions are mirror-images of reality. Just as here
in the physical world we do not immediately perceive the inner nature
of the rose, but the external redness, so do we not have a direct
perception of a departed friend or brother, but encounter a visionary
image. We are enveloped in the cloud of our visions, so to speak, but
we know quite clearly that we are together with the other being It is
a real relationships, in fact more real than a relationship between
one person and another can be on earth.

In the first period after death we perceive a soul through the image.
Also after the kamaloca period the visions that surround us, and that
we experience, point back, for the most part, to what we experienced
on earth. We know, for instance, that a dead friend is there outside
us in the spiritual world. We perceive him through our visions. We
feel entirely at one with him. We know exactly how we are related to
him. What we chiefly perceive, however, is what happened between us
on earth. This, to begin with, clothes itself in our vision. The
chief thing is the aftermath of our earthly relationship, just as
even after the kamaloca period we live in the consequences of our
earthly existence. The cloud of visions that envelops us is entirely
dependent on how we spent our earthly existence.

In the first period of kamaloca the soul is clothed, as in a cloud,
by its Imaginations. At first the cloud is dark. When some time has
elapsed after death, Imaginative vision gradually perceives that this
cloud begins to light up as if irradiated by the rays of the morning
sun. When Inspiration is added to Imaginative cognition we realize
that we live, to begin with, in the cloud of our earthly experiences.
We are enveloped by them. We are able to relate ourselves only to
those who have died and with whom we were together on the earth, or to
those still on earth capable of ascending with their consciousness
into the spiritual world. What we have characterized for Imaginative
cognition as the illumination of the cloud of our visions from one
side by a glimmering light points to the approach of the hierarchies
into our own being. We now begin to live into the realm of higher
spirituality. Previously, we were only connected to the world we
brought with us. Now the life of the higher hierarchies begin to
shine towards us, to penetrate us. But in order to understand this
process, we must gain some insight into the relationships of size
perceived through imaginative cognition as the soul draws out of the
physical body.

This actually happens as we pass through the gate of death. Our being
expands and becomes larger and larger. This is not an easy concept
but that is what actually happens. It is only on earth that we
consider ourselves limited within the boundary of our skin. After
death we expand into the infinite spaces, growing ever larger. When
we have reached the end of the kamaloca period, we literally extend
to the orbit of the moon around the earth. In the language of
occultism we become Moon dwellers. Our being has expanded to such an
extent that its outer boundary coincides with the circle described by
the moon around the earth. Today I cannot go into the relative
positions of the planets. An explanation of what does no apparently
agree with orthodox astronomy can be found in the Düsseldorf
lectures,
Spiritual Hierarchies and Their Reflection in the
Physical World: Zodiac, Planets, Cosmos.

Thus we grow farther out into cosmic space, into the whole planetary
system, though first into what the occultist calls the Mercury
sphere. That is to say, after the kamaloca period we become Mercury
dwellers. We truly feel that we are inhabiting cosmic space. Just as
during our physical existence we feel ourselves to be earth dwellers,
so then we feel ourselves to be Mercury dwellers. I cannot describe
the details now, but the following conscious experience is present.
We are not now enclosed in such a small fraction of space as during
our earthly existence but the wide sphere bounded by the orbit of
Mercury is within our being. How we live through this period also
depends upon how we have prepared ourselves on earth — on the
forces we have imbibed on earth in order to grow into the right or
wrong relationship to the Mercury sphere.

In order to understand these facts we can compare two or more people
by means of occult research but we will take two. For instance, let
us consider a man who passed through the gate of death with an
immoral attitude and one who passed through the gate of death with a
moral attitude of soul. A considerable difference is perceptible and
it becomes apparent when we consider the relationship of one person
to another after death. For the man with a moral attitude of soul,
the pictures are present, enveloping the soul and he can have a
certain degree of communion everywhere with other human beings. This
is due to his moral attitude. A man with an immoral attitude of soul
becomes a kind of hermit in the spiritual world. For example, he
knows that another human being is also in the spiritual world. He
knows that he is together with him but he is unable to emerge from
the prison of his cloud of Imaginations and approach him. Morality
makes us into social beings in the spiritual world, into beings who
can have contact with others. Lack of morality makes us into hermits
in the spiritual world and transports us into solitude. This is an
important causal connection between death and rebirth.

This is true also of the further course of events. At a later period,
after having passed through the Mercury sphere, which in the occult
we call the Venus sphere, we feel ourselves as Venus dwellers. There
between Mercury and Venus, where our cloud of visions is irradiated
from without, the Beings of the higher hierarchies are able to
approach the human being. Now again it depends on whether we have
prepared ourselves in the right manner to be received as social
spirits into the ranks of the hierarchies and to have communion with
them, or whether we are compelled to pass them by as hermits. Whether
we are social or lonely spirits depends upon still another factor.
Whereas in the previous sphere was can be sociable only if this has
been prepared on earth as a result of morality, in the Venus sphere
the power that leads us into community, into a kind of social life,
is due to our religious attitude on earth. We most certainly condemn
ourselves to become hermits in the Venus sphere if we have failed to
develop religious feelings during earthly life, feelings of union
with the Infinite, with the Divine. Occult investigation observes
that as a result of an atheistic tendency in the soul, of rejecting
the connection of our finite with our infinite nature, the human
being locks himself up within his own prison. It is a fact that the
adherents of the Monistic Union, with its creed that does not promote
a truly religious attitude, are preparing themselves for a condition
in which they will no longer we able to form any Monistic Union, but
will be relegated each to his own separate prison!

This is not meant to be a principle on which to base judgments. It is
a fact that presents itself to occult observation as the consequence
of a religious or irreligious attitude of soul during earthly life.
Many different religions have been established on the earth in the
course of evolution, all of them emanating essentially from a common
source. Their founders have had to reckon with the temperament of the
different peoples, with the climate and with other factors to which
the religions had to be adjusted. It is therefore in the nature of
things that souls did not come into this Venus sphere with a common
religious consciousness, but with one born of their particular creed.

Definite feelings for the spiritual that are colored by this or that
religious creed bring it about that in the Venus sphere a man has
community only with those of like feelings who shared the same creed
during earthly life. In the Venus sphere individuals are separated
according to their particular creeds. On the earth they have hitherto
been divided into races according to external characteristics.
Although the configuration of groups in the Venus sphere corresponds
in general to the groupings of people here on earth because racial
connections are related to religious creeds, the groupings do not
quite correspond because there they are brought together according to
their understanding of a particular creed. As a result of experience
connected with a particular creed, souls enclose themselves within
certain boundaries. In the Mercury sphere a man has, above all,
understanding for those with whom he was connected on earth. If he
had a moral attitude of soul, he will have real intercourse in the
Mercury sphere with those to whom he was related during his earthly
life. In the Venus sphere he is taken up into one of the great
religious communities to which he belonged during his earthly
existence by virtue of his constitution of soul.

The next sphere is the Sun sphere in which we feel ourselves as Sun
dwellers for a definite period between death and rebirth. During this
period we learn to know the nature of the Sun, which is quite other
than astronomy describes. Here again it is a question of living
rightly into the Sun sphere. We now have the outstanding experience,
and it arises in the soul like an elemental power, that all
differentiations between human souls must cease. In the Mercury
sphere we are more or less limited to the circle of those with whom
we were related on earth. In the Venus sphere we feel at home with
those who had similar religious experiences to ours on earth and we
still find satisfaction only among these communities. But the soul is
conscious of deep loneliness in the Sun sphere if it has no
understanding for the souls entering this sphere, as is the case with
Felix Balde, for instance. Now in ancient times conditions were such
that in the Venus sphere souls were to be found in the provinces of
the several religions, finding and giving understanding in them.
Because all religions have sprung from a common source, when the
human being entered the Sun sphere he had in him so much of the old
common inheritance that he could come near to all the other souls in
the Sun sphere and be together with them, to understand them, to be a
social spirit among them.

In these more ancient periods of evolution souls could not do much of
themselves to satisfy the longing that arose there. Because without
human intervention a common human nucleus was present in mankind, it
was possible for souls to have intercourse with others belonging to
different creeds. In ancient Brahmanism, in the Chinese and other
religions of the earth, there was so much of the common kernel of
religion that souls in the Sun sphere found themselves in that primal
home, the source of all religious life. This changed in the middle
period of the earth. Connection with the primal source of the
religions was lost and can only be found again through occult
knowledge. So, in the present cycle of evolution man also must
prepare himself for entering the Sun sphere while still on earth
because community does not arise there of itself. This is also an
aspect of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, of
Christianity. Because of it human beings in the present cycle of
evolution can so prepare themselves on earth that universal community
is achieved in the Sun sphere. For this purpose the Sun Spirit, the
Christ, had to come down to earth. Since His coming, it has been
possible for souls on the earth to find the way to universal
community in the Sun sphere between death and rebirth.

Much could be added in support of the universality that is born of
the Christ Mystery when it is rightly understood. Much has been said
in the course of years, but the Christ Mystery can ever and again be
illuminated from new aspects. It is often said that special emphasis
of the Christ Mystery creates prejudices against other creeds, and
that is advanced because in our Anthroposophical Movement in Central
Europe special emphasis has been laid on it. Such a reproach is quite
unintelligible. The true meaning of the Christ Mystery has only been
discovered from the occult aspect in modern times. If a Buddhist were
to say, “You place Christianity above Buddhism because you
attribute a special position to the Christ that is not indicated in
my sacred books, and you are therefore prejudiced against Buddhism,”
that would be as sensible as if the Buddhist were to claim that the
Copernican view of the universe cannot be accepted because it, too,
is not contained in his sacred writings. The fact that things are
discovered at a later date has nothing to do with the equal
justification of religious beliefs.

The Mystery of Golgotha is such that it cannot be regarded as a
special privilege. It is a spiritual-scientific fact that can be
acknowledged by every religious system just as the Copernican system
can. It is not a question of justifying some creed that up until now
has failed to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather is it a
question of grasping the spiritual-scientific fact of Golgotha. If
this is unintelligible, it is even more so to speak about an abstract
comparison of all creeds and to say that one ought to accept an
abstract similarity among them. The different creeds should not be
compared with what Christianity has become as a creed, but with the
essence that is contained in Christianity itself.

Take the Hindu creed. Nobody is received into this creed who is not a
Hindu. It is connected with a people, and this is true of most
ancient creeds. Buddhism has broken through this restriction, yet if
rightly understood, it too applies to a particular community. But now
let us consider the external facts. If in Europe we were to have a
creed similar, let us say, to the Hindu creed, we should be obliged
to swear allegiance to the ancient god, Wotan. Wotan was a national
god, a god connected with a definite racial stock. But what has in
fact happened in the West? It is not a national god that has been
accepted, but, inasmuch as his external lie is concerned, an alien
personality. Jesus of Nazareth has been accepted from outside.
Whereas the other creeds essentially have something egoistical about
them in the religious sense and do not wish to break through their
boundaries, the West has been singled out by the fact that it has
suppressed its egoistical religious system — for example, the
ancient Wotan religion — and for the sake of its inner
substance has accepted an impulse that did not grow out of its own
flesh and blood. Insofar as the West is concerned, Christianity is
not the egoistical creed that the others were for the different
peoples. This is a factor of considerable importance that is also
borne out by external happenings. It makes for the universality of
Christianity in yet another respect if Christianity truly places the
Mystery of Golgotha at the center of the evolution of humanity.

Christianity has not yet made great progress in its development
because even now two aspects have still not been clearly
distinguished. They will only be distinguished slowly and by degrees.
Who, in the true sense of the Mystery of Golgotha, is a Christian? He
is one who knows that something real happened in the Mystery of
Golgotha, that the Sun Spirit lived in the Christ, that Christ poured
His Being over the earth, that Christ died for all men. Although Paul
declared that Christ died not only for the Jews but also for the
heathen, these words even today are still little understood. Not
until it is realized that Christ fulfilled the Deed of Golgotha for
all human beings will Christianity be understood. For the real power
that flowed from Golgotha is one thing, and the understanding of it
is another. Knowledge of who the Christ really is should be striven
for, but since the Mystery of Golgotha our attitude to every man can
only be expressed as follows. Whatever your creed may be, Christ also
died for you, and his significance for you is the same as for every
other human being.

A true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha leads to the attitude
that we ask ourselves about each person we meet, “How much has
he in him of real Christianity, irrespective of his particular
beliefs?” Because man must increasingly acquire consciousness
of what is real in him to know something of the Mystery of Christ is
naturally a lofty ideal. This will become more widespread as time
goes on, and to it will belong the need to understand the Mystery of
Golgotha. But this is different from the concept that one may have of
the Mystery of Golgotha, of its universality that holds good for all
human beings. Here the essential thing is for the soul to feel that
this makes us into social beings in the Sun sphere. If we feel
enclosed in some creed, we become hermits there. We are social beings
in the Sun sphere if we understand the universality of the Mystery of
Golgotha. Then we can find a relation to every being who draws near
to us in the Sun sphere. As a result of the insight into the Mystery
of Golgotha that we acquire during earthly life within our cycle of
evolution, we become beings able to move freely in the Sun sphere.

Of what should we be capable during this period between death and
rebirth?

We come now to a fact that is exceedingly important for modern
occultism. Those human beings who lived on earth before the Mystery
of Golgotha — what I am now saying is essentially correct,
though not in detail — found the Throne of Christ in the Sun
sphere with the Christ upon it. They were able to recognize Him
because the old legacy of the common source of all religions was
still living in them. But the Christ Spirit came down from the Sun,
and in the Mystery of Golgotha He flowed into the life of the earth.
He left the Sun, and only the Akashic picture of the Christ is found
in the Sun sphere between death and rebirth. The throne is not
occupied by the real Christ. We must bring up from the earth the
concept of our living connection with Christ in order that through
the Akashic picture we have a living relationship with Him. Then it
is possible for us to have the Christ also from the Sun sphere and
for Him to stimulate all the forces in us that are necessary if we
are to pass through the Sun sphere in the right way.

Our journey between death and rebirth progresses still further. From
the earthly realm we have derived the power, through a moral and
religious attitude of soul, to live, as it were, into the human
beings with whom we were together on the earth, and then into the
higher hierarchies. But this power gradually vanishes, becomes dimmer
and dimmer, and what remains is essentially the power that we derive
on the earth from the Mystery of Golgotha. In order that we may find
our way in the Sun sphere a new Light-bearer appears there, a Being
whom we must learn to know in his primal power. We bring with us from
the earth an understanding of the Christ, but in order to develop a
stage further so that we may proceed out into the universe from the
Sun sphere to Mars, we need to recognize the second Throne that
stands beside the Throne of Christ in the Sun. This is possible
simply by virtue of the fact that we are human souls. From this other
Throne we now learn to know the other Being who, together with the
Christ, leads us onward. This other Being is Lucifer. We learn to
know Lucifer, and through the powers that he is able to impart to us
we make the further journey through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn.

We expand ever further into cosmic space, but as we move out beyond
the Saturn sphere our state of consciousness is changed. We enter
into a kind of cosmic twilight. We cannot call it cosmic sleep, but a
cosmic twilight. Now for the first time the powers of the whole
cosmos can work in upon us. They work from all sides, and we receive
them into our being. So after we have expanded into the spheres,
there is a period between death and rebirth when the forces of the
whole cosmos stream into our being from all sides, from the whole of
the starry realms, as it were. Then we begin to draw together again,
pass through the different spheres down to the Venus sphere, contact
and become ever smaller until the time comes when we can again unite
with an earthly human germ.

What kind of a being are we when we unite with this germ? We are the
being we have described, but we have received into us the forces from
the whole cosmos. What we receive during the outward journey depends
on the extent to which we have prepared ourselves for it, and our
karma is formed according to the way we have lived together with the
human beings we have met during life on earth. The forces by means of
which an adjustment takes place in a new earth life are built up as a
result of having been together with those human beings after death.
That we appear as a human being, that we are inwardly able to have
karma imbued with cosmic forces, depends on the fact that we received
forces from the whole cosmos during a
certain period between death and a new birth. At birth a being who
has contracted to the minutest dimensions, but has drawn into itself
the forces of the wide expanse of the whole cosmos unites itself with
the physical human germ. We bear the whole cosmos within us when we
incarnate again on earth. It may be said that we bear this cosmos
within us in the way in which it can unite with the attitude that we,
in accordance with our earlier earth existence, had brought with us
in our souls on the outward journey when we were expanding into the
spheres.

A twofold adaptation has to take place. We adapt to the whole cosmos
and to our former karma. The fact that there is also an adaptation to
former karma that must be harmonized in the cosmos came to me in an
extraordinary way during the investigations of the last few months in
connection with individual cases. I say, expressly, in individual
cases because I do not wish to state thereby a general law. When a
person passes through the gate of death he dies under a certain
constellation of stars. This constellation is significant for his
further life of soul because it remains there as an imprint. In his
soul there remains the endeavor to enter into this same constellation
at a new birth, to do justice once again to the forces received at
the moment of death. It is an interesting point that if one works out
the constellation at death and compares it with the constellation of
the later birth, one finds that it coincides to a high degree with
the constellation at the former death. It must be remembered that the
person is born at another spot on the earth that corresponds with
this constellation. In fact, he is adapted to the cosmos, members
himself into the cosmos, and thus a balance is established in the
soul between the individual and the cosmic life.

Kant once said very beautifully that there were two things that
especially uplifted him — the starry heavens above him and the
moral law within him. This is a beautiful expression in that it is
confirmed by occultism. Both are the same — the starry heavens
above us and what we bear as moral law within us. For as we grow out
into cosmic space between death and a new birth, we take the starry
heavens into ourselves, and then in the soul we bear as our moral
attitude a mirror image of the starry heavens. Here we touch upon one
of the points where anthroposophy can only develop into a feeling for
the moral-universal. What appears to be theory is immediately
transformed into moral impulses of the soul. Here the human being
feels full responsibility towards his own being, for he realizes that
between death and a new birth the whole cosmos worked into his being,
and he gathered together what he derived from the cosmos. He is
responsible to the whole cosmos, for he actually bears the whole of
the cosmos within him.

An attempt has been made to express this feeling in a passage of
The Soul's Probation,
in the monologue of Capesius, where it is
said, “In your thinking world-thoughts are weaving . . .”
Attention is drawn to the significance for the soul when it feels
that it is man's sacred duty to bring forth the forces that one
has gathered out of the cosmos, and it is the greatest sin to allow
these forces to lie fallow.

Concrete investigations showed that we take the whole cosmos into our
being and bring it forth again in our earthly existence. Of the
forces that man carries with him, only a few have their origin on the
earth. We study man in connection with the forces that work in the
physical, etheric and astral bodies, and in the ego. Of course, the
forces that play into our physical body come to us from the earth,
but we cannot draw directly out of the earth the forces we need for
the etheric body. These forces can only approach us between death and
rebirth during the period we are expanding into the planetary
spheres. If one takes an immoral attitude of soul into these spheres,
one will not be able to attract the right forces during the time
between death and a new rebirth. A man who has not developed
religious impulses cannot attract the right forces in the Venus
sphere, and so the forces that are needed in the etheric may be
stultified. Here we see the karmic connection that exists between
later and earlier lives. This indicates how the knowledge that we
obtain through occultism may become impulses in our life of soul and
how the awareness of what we are can lead us to rise to an ever more
spiritual life.

What was prepared for by the Mystery of Golgotha is necessary in our
present cycle of evolution so that man may live in the right way into
the Sun sphere between death and a new birth. Spiritual science has
to achieve that the human being shall be in a position to grow out
even beyond the Sun sphere with the universal-human, spiritually
social consciousness that is needed there. Insofar as the Sun sphere
itself is concerned, the connection that is experienced with the
Mystery of Golgotha suffices. But in order to carry a feeling and
understanding of the human-universal beyond the Sun sphere, we must
be able to grasp, in the anthroposophical sense, the relation of the
several religions to one another. We must grow beyond a narrowly
circumscribed creed with its particular shades of feeling and
understand every soul, irrespective of its belief. Above all, one
thing connected with the Christ impulse is fulfilled between death
and rebirth. It is contained in the words, “Where two or three
are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.”
The gathering of two or three is not connected by Christ with this or
that belief. The possibility of Him being among them is provided
inasmuch as they are united in His Name.

What has been cultivated for years, through the performances of the
Mystery Plays, and especially the last
(The Guardian of the Threshold),
should provide a spiritual-scientific understanding
for what is essential in our epoch. On the one hand, we have to
acquire a relationship to the Christ impulse, on the other, to the
Powers that stand in opposition to Him — the impulses of
Lucifer and Ahriman. We must realize that as soon as we emerge from
Maya, we have to deal with Powers who unfold forces in the cosmos.
The time is drawing ever nearer in the evolution of humanity when we
must learn to discern the essential being rather than the teaching.
This is nowhere so apparent as in connection with the Mystery of
Golgotha. The Being is essential, not the mere content of the words.

I should like the following to be put quite exactly to the test. In
fact, it is easiest to deal with people who put to the test what is
said out of occult sources. There is nothing similar in any of the
other creeds to the depths that are revealed through the Mystery of
Golgotha.

A particular prejudice still prevails today. People speak as if
things should happen in the world as they do in a school, as if
everything depended on the World Teacher. But the Christ is not a
World Teacher but a World Doer, One Who has fulfilled the Mystery of
Golgotha, and Whose Being should be recognized. That is the point.
How little it is a question of the mere words, of the mere doctrinal
content, we learn from the beautiful words uttered by the Christ, “Ye
are Gods!”
(John 10:34).
We learn this also from the fact that
He indicated repeatedly that man attains the highest when he realizes
the divine in his own nature. These words of the Christ resound into
the world, “Be conscious that you are like the Gods!” One
can say that that is a great teaching!

The same teaching, however, resounds from other sources. In the
Bible, where the beginning of Earth evolution is described, Lucifer
says, “Ye shall be as Gods!” The same doctrinal content
is uttered by Lucifer and by the Christ, “Ye shall be as Gods!”
but the two utterances mean the opposite for man. Indeed, shattering
calls sound forth in these words uttered at one time by the Tempter
and at another by Him Who is the Redeemer, the Savior and the
Restorer of the being of man.

Between death and rebirth everything depends upon knowledge of the
Being. In the Sun sphere the greatest danger is to take
Lucifer for the Christ because both use the same language, as it
were, give the same teaching, and from them both the same words
resound forth. Everything depends on the Being. The fact that
this Being or that Being is speaking — that is the point, not
the doctrinal content because it is the real forces pulsing through
the world that matter. In the higher worlds, and above all in what
plays into the earthly spheres, we only understand the words aright
when we know from which Being they proceed. We can never recognize
the rank of a Being merely by the word, but only by knowledge of the
whole connection in which a Being stands. The example of the words
that men are like the Gods is an absolute confirmation of this.

These are significant facts of evolution. They are voiced not on
account of their content — and in this case, too, not so much
on this account — but on account of the spirit they carry, so
that there may arise in souls feelings that ought to be the outcome
of such words. If the feelings remain with those who have absorbed
such truths, even if the actual words are forgotten, not so much is
lost, after all. Let us take the more radical case. Suppose that
there were someone among us who would forget everything that had just
been said, but would only retain the feeling that can flow from such
words. Such a person would, nevertheless, in an anthroposophical
sense, receive enough of what is meant by them.

After all, we have to make use of words, and words sometimes appear
theoretical. We must learn to look through the words to the essence
and receive this into the soul. If anthroposophy is grasped in its
essence, the world will learn to understand many things, particularly
in connection with the evolution of humanity. Here I want to quote
two examples that are connected outwardly, rather than inwardly, with
my recent occult investigations. They astonished me because they
showed how a truth which was established occultly corresponds to what
has come into the world as a result of inspired men and can be
rediscovered in what exists already in the world.

I have occupied myself a great deal with Homer. Lately the fact that
nothing can be changed after death, that relationships remain the
same, came vividly before my soul. For example, if in life one was in
some way related to a person and did not love him, this cannot be
changed. If, bearing this in mind, one now reads the passages in
Homer where he describes the world beyond as a place where life
becomes unchangeable, one begins to understand the depth of these
words about the region where things are no longer subject to change.
It is a wonderful experience to compare one's own knowledge
with what was expressed as significant occult truth by the “blind
Homer,” the seer, in this epic!

Another fact astounded me, and though I strongly resisted it because
it seemed incredible, I found it impossible to do so. Many of you
will know the Medici Tombs by Michelangelo in Florence, with the
statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici and four allegorical
figures The artistic element in these figures is usually overlooked.
They are viewed as barren allegories. Now these figures with one
exception, were not quite finished, and yet they do not give the
impression of being merely allegorical. In the guide books we are
told that the statue of Giuliano stands on one side and that of
Lorenzo on the other. Actually, they have been reversed. The statue
said to represent Lorenzo is that of Giuliano, and that of Giuliano
is the statue of Lorenzo. This is correct, but in almost every
history of art manual and in Baedecker, the facts are wrongly given.
The descriptions would certainly not tally and apparently the statues
were once reversed. They no longer stand where Michelangelo had
placed them originally. But I want to speak mainly about the four
allegorical figures. At the foot of one of the Medici statues we have
the figures of “Night” and “Day;” at the foot
of the other, “Dawn” and “Dusk.”

As I have said, to begin with I resisted what I am now going to say
about them. Let us start with the figures of “Night.”
Suppose one immerses oneself in everything one sees, in every gesture
(books comment rather nonsensically that this is a gesture that a
sleeping person cannot possibly adopt.) If, having studied every
gesture, every movement of the limbs, one asks oneself how an artist
would have to portray the human figure if he wished to convey the
greatest possible activity of the etheric body in sleep, then he
would have to do it out of his artistic instincts exactly as
Michelangelo did it in his figure. The figure of “Night”
corresponds with the posture of the etheric body. I am not suggesting
that Michelangelo was conscious of this. He simply did it.

Now let us look at the figure of “Day.” This is no barren
allegory. Picture the lower members of the human being more passive,
and the ego predominantly active. We have this expressed in the
figure of “Day.” If we were now to express in the posture
the action of the astral body working freely when the other members
are reduced to inactivity, then we should find this in the so-called
allegory of “Dawn.” And if sought to express the
conditions where the physical body is not altogether falling to
pieces, but becomes limp as a result of the withdrawal of the ego and
astral body, this is wonderfully portrayed in the figure of “Dusk.”
In these figures we have living portrayals of the four sheaths of
man. We can readily understand the once widespread legend about the
figure “Night.” It was said that when Michelangelo was
alone with this figure it became alive, rose up and walked about.
This is understandable if one knows that it has the posture of the
etheric or life body, and that in such a position the etheric body
can be fully active. If this is perceived, then indeed the figure
appears to rise up, and one knows that it could walk about were it
not carved out of marble. If the etheric body only were really active
there, then nothing would prevent it from moving about.

Many secrets are contained in the works of men and much will become
intelligible for the first time when these things are studied with
sharpened occult perception. Whether, however, we understand a work
of art well or not so well, is not connected with the
universal-human. What matters is something quite else. If our eyes
are sharpened in this way we begin to understand the soul of another
human being, not through occult perception, which, after all, cannot
help seeing into the spiritual world, but through a perception
quickened by spiritual science. Spiritual science grasped by sound
human reason develops knowledge in us of what we meet in life, and,
above all, of the souls of our fellow men. We shall attempt to
understand every human soul.

This understanding, however, is meant in quite a different way from
the usual. Unfortunately, in life love is all too often entirely
egotistical. Usually a man loves what he is particularly attracted to
because of some circumstance or other. For the rest, he contents
himself with universal love, a general love for humanity. But what is
this? We should be able to understand every human soul. We will not
find excellence everywhere, but no harm is done for actually one can
do no greater injury to some souls than by pouring blind love and
adulation over them.

We shall speak further on this subject in the lecture the day after
tomorrow.